Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The Big One

On August 21, 2010, Jared turned one. This means that it has only been one year since he came into our family! It feels like we have known him forever. I could go on and on about how much has changed this year, but anyone who has been following our posts knows that already. Jared is emerging from babyhood as an independent crawler who talks and sings and plays constantly.
To celebrate Jared's birthday, we took him to the Oakland zoo.

He had a great time people watching. We think he saw some of the animals, too.
The Oakland zoo has a great children's area with play structures and an area where you can pet goats and sheep. Jared was fearless petting goats.

We have an idea that he was fearless because he thought he was petting dogs. The whole time we were in the goat area he kept repeating, "Bow-wow-wow!"
Here is the birthday boy inside a play turtle shell. "Turtle" is one of the words he says, but he wasn't too excited to be one.

After our trip to the zoo, we went to the temple, where Jared got to play with some friends we ran into there. Then we went home for the birthday bath. We put him in the tub with all of his bath toys. He could not have been more excited.

When we were trying to decide what to do for Jared's birthday that he would enjoy, we considered just giving him three baths. This boy LOVES water.

He loves drinking water, splashing in it, pulling his slippery wet body around in the bathtub, and talking about water all day. He goes back and forth between calling it "wah-wah" and "ah-ter." For a boy who can only say about ten words meaningfully, having two for water is a sign of true obsession.
On Sunday, we gave Jared his cake. This was my first ever effort at cake decorating, so I'm willing to let a little sloppiness slide. It's just going to be eaten, right?

Wrong. It is going to be eaten, played with, smeared all over, squished between fingers and toes, and enjoyed as only a one year old child can enjoy a chocolate cake.

When you are freed from constraints like forks and decorum, is there any limit to the possible fun?

And then the sugar hit his bloodstream.

He had a blast. After a chocolate filled bath (the bathtub was sticky for two days), we let him open some presents. He was still a little bit more interested in eating the paper than finding out what was inside.

We gave him a water bottle and some sand toys. You can probably guess what was the favorite.

Our thinking with the sand toys was that they would either deter him from eating sand or teach him to use utensils.
Because he was reaching the 12 month mark, Jared went to the doctor on Tuesday for four shots, a blood draw, and some measurements. He weighed 24 lbs. 1 oz., was 29.5 inches tall, and his head circumference is 47.5 cm. These numbers put him in the 70th, 45th, and 60th percentiles respectively.
Since eleven cute baby pictures is not enough for a post celebrating Jared, here is one more for the road.